Well, he’s done it. Voreqe Bainimarama has seized his place in history by blitzing his opponents and scoring a decisive win in the first genuinely democratic election in Fiji since Independence 44 years ago. By any standard, it is a remarkable achievement. Because this is no run-of-the-mill election win of the kind the world routinely witnesses, a changing of the political guard under a tried and tested order. Bainimarama not only upended the status quo in Fiji when he seized power eight years ago. He took a sledgehammer to the entire political edifice, smashed it to smithereens and then set about rebuilding Fiji into a modern nation-state that has been transformed at almost every level. And transformed it for the better in the eyes of most Fijian voters, who’ve given the PM an overwhelming mandate to continue his reform program.

In the process, Bainimarama himself has changed – the impatient, sometimes fiery authoritarian figure giving way to a softer, more genial presence who has come to relish his encounters with ordinary people and has taken to being a politician in a way that few would have expected. Watching the Internet feed of the PM’s debate on radio with his principal opponent, Ro Teimumu Kepa, many Fijians would have been surprised to see that it was Bainimarama who was most at ease, smiling as she launched a barrage of provocations in his direction, including “you will soon get your just deserts”. Well yes he has, though not quite in the way the GMBRTD – as some people refer to her by the acronym of her chiefly title – would have expected.

SODELPA LIUMURI-ED

There are many dimensions to this extraordinary saga but none more notable than the way in which Bainimarama has carried indigenous opinion with him and rewritten the political rules in Fiji. For the first time, i’Taukei voters have failed to be swayed by the traditional political weapon of crudely exploiting their fears – fears for their land, their religion, their culture and their way of life. SODELPA tried to wield that weapon with a campaign characterised by some of the worst lies ever told in a Fijian election. They included the former Prime Minister, Laisenia Qarase, openly telling i’Taukei that they would not be able to worship Jesus if FijiFirst won the election. It didn’t work. In fact, there’s ample evidence that it backfired, driving voters into the arms of the PM, who patiently explained that these lies were being told to manipulate i’Taukei opinion while he laid out an alternative vision of inclusiveness and hope.

When the polls over the past few weeks gave Bainimarama a commanding lead, the word from SODELPA was that Frank would be luimuri-ed (betrayed) by his ostensible supporters, who were telling him to his face that they supported him but would vote SODELPA in the privacy of the voting booth. In fact, the reverse happened on Election Day. SODELPA was liumuri-ed by many of those who’d pledged allegiance to it publicly but privately voted for Frank. It is arguably the end of the indigenous scare campaign in Fijian politics. The days of i’Taukei leaders treating their own people as fools are over. And not a moment too soon.

A DIPLOMATIC BLUNDER

The extent of the Bainimarama victory has floored his opponents and much of the diplomatic community, which has never believed the opinion polls showing him with a commanding lead all year. Australia and New Zealand, in particular, have peddled the notion that Bainimarama would be forced into a coalition even if he managed to garner the most votes. It has been yet another in a long line of miscalculations by our bigger neighbours since 2006, most of them based on being captive to the views of the wrong people. The reason why few diplomats saw this result coming is that the local diplomatic community continues to place far too much store on the views of partisan participants in the process and certain local NGOs, who have been overwhelmingly opposed to Bainimarama. One ambassador confided to me that as recently as a few months ago, a senior Australian diplomat was still trying to persuade his diplomatic colleagues of the need to “destroy” the PM. The encounter left this ambassador shaking his head. “You cannot have a democracy without racial equality and only Bainimarama can unite Fiji”, he said.

In the election aftermath, Australia and New Zealand will be hoping to step up their recent attempts to ingratiate themselves with a democratically-elected Bainimarama Government. It isn’t going to be easy. There’s a strong feeling in certain circles that they should be brought to account for their overt attempts to damage Fiji for having the impertinence to chart its own course. Overall relations will remain standoffish, the charm offensive by Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop notwithstanding. Or the positive contribution that Australia has made co-leading the Multinational Observers Group and at the Elections Office, where Michael Clancy has been a valued deputy to Mohammed Saneem, together with a number of others who have played an integral role in the success of this election.

New Zealand, in particular, continues to sorely offend the Fijian establishment with the content of its travel warnings. The latest – updated after the election – urges New Zealanders to be cautious when visiting Fiji and refers to “some risk to your security because of underlying political tensions”. Really? The visiting TV3 correspondent, Amanda Gillies, might have put herself at risk by “door-stopping” the Prime Minister and gratuitously asking him whether he planned another coup (he didn’t hit her, whatever the blogs say). But it would be difficult for any other visiting New Zealander to detect “underlying political tensions”. Yes, the Government’s opponents are decidedly unhappy but the police and military are ready to step in at the first sign of restiveness, let alone civil disturbances. A SODELPA attempt to stage a march through the streets of Suva on Friday afternoon was firmly rejected. Such marches have been the prelude to disturbances in the past and will not be tolerated again.

A SMEAR ON THE JUDICIARY

The latest NZ Travel Warning goes on to make the outrageous claim that “the government has a degree of influence over the judiciary”. Where is the evidence for the truth of this statement? None is given in the advisory. Given the gravity of the charge and its potential impact on public confidence in the judiciary, isn’t it incumbent on the NZ Government to provide the details on which it bases its claim? Because the truth is that no credible evidence has ever been advanced that the executive branch of the Fijian Government influences the judiciary, nor that the judiciary does the Government’s bidding. Indeed the Chief Justice, Anthony Gates, and his fellow judges pride themselves on being fiercely independent, as does Christopher Pryde, the NZ-born Director of Public Prosecutions. Yes, some political figures have been convicted of a range of offences, including former Prime Ministers Laisenia Qarase and Mahendra Chaudry. But they have been convicted solely on the evidence before the courts and there have been no serious legal challenges to the validity of the charges against them.

The CJ and the DPP are highly aggrieved by the NZ accusations and understandably so because of their potential to damage public confidence in the system. Is it that the Kiwis continue to be irritated that Fiji has maintained a functioning judiciary despite all the attempts by Australia and NZ to deter their citizens from taking up posts in Fiji? If NZ wants to have friendly relations with a democratic Fiji, it must stop trying to denigrate and degrade our institutions.

FREE EDUCATION: THE GAME CHANGER

While the diplomatic miscalculations have been monumental, it has been a correspondingly monumental era in the nation’s development, whether it is the many thousands of households who now have electricity and clean water for the first time, the dramatic improvement in the nation’s roads, the completion of projects such as the Grand Pacific Hotel or the clock tower atop Government Buildings chiming in the hours again for the first time in a generation.

Fiji is patently not the same country in the same arrested state of development that it was when Bainimarama herded the old political order aside at gunpoint in 2006. And while that intervention may have earned him pariah status among Fiji’s bigger neighbours – who fulminated about Bainimarama perpetuating a coup culture – they missed a wider truth. That far from being regarded as a tyrant by the majority of his own people, they came to regard him as a hero, someone who identified with them, empathised with their needs and had their best interests at heart. Nothing exemplifies this more than the Government’s free schooling policy, truly the game changer that has transformed many lives for the better and set Fiji on a path towards being a smarter country.

I was in a taxi on Friday with a driver who said he wished he’d been born in the new Fiji because his widowed mother had been too poor to pay for his school fees. He’d been dragged in front of the class in primary school and humiliated as the principal demanded payment before eventually throwing him out of the school. Heartbreaking stories like this are legion in Fiji. Bainimarama put an end to the suffering of countless parents and students alike this year with his free schooling initiative. So it is only a mystery to outsiders – and the PM’s band of unyielding domestic opponents – that while he may have begun his journey as a coup maker, he ends it having morphed triumphantly into a democrat with the biggest popular vote ever secured by a politician in Fiji.

THUMBS UP FOR THE BAINIMARAMA AGENDA

How it must gall these opponents that the “illegal dictator” is about to become the legally elected Prime Minister, that the “Pariah” is now an important player on both the regional and international stages and that the Fijian people – in an election dubbed credible by the Multinational Observer Group – have put their trust in him to take the nation forward. Not only has Bainimarama emerged triumphant at the polls, his program has now been overwhelmingly endorsed in what has unquestionably been a referendum on every aspect of his program. Every citizen is now a Fijian by popular acclamation. Every Fijian enjoys equal status and equal opportunity by popular acclamation. The Secular State is endorsed by popular acclamation. The Qoliqoli Bill is rejected by popular acclamation.

The point is that Voreqe Bainimarama now has a democratic mandate for the 2013 Constitution, which his opponents say was foisted on the nation, but that the nation has now embraced. And he has a decisive mandate to implement the Manifesto he took to the election. It is inarguable. It is unambiguous. And it is a momentous achievement, an unparalleled triumph of leadership in the Fijian context.

Far from pandering to their prejudices and fears, Bainimarama has convinced the Fijian people – and especially the i’Taukei – to turn their backs on division and embrace a united and inclusive future. He has created Year Zero in the country’s tumultuous history to finally begin the task of nation building that should have begun at Independence in 1970 but was derailed by sectional interests, the elite and a culture of self entitlement and outright selfishness. Instead of working together as one nation, Fijians have spent much of the last 44 years in the thrall of those around them who preach division and hatred. But now – thanks largely to Bainimarama – they have been jolted into the realisation that they have been perpetually manipulated, not for their own benefit, but to suit the base ambitions of others.

In the election coverage on television, I was struck by the number of people – notably i’Taukei – who said they voted for Bainimarama not so much for his service delivery – impressive as that may be – but because he was “the best person to take the nation forward”. This is a hugely positive phenomenon. Because it suggests that ordinary people have rejected the politics of division. They are sick of living in the past. They are tired of the old arguments. They want to embrace a united future in which every Fijian has a stake. And they regard Voreqe Bainimarama as the best person to deliver that future. To offer a vision of progress and hope.

A SUCCESSFUL DOUBLE ACT.

I recall a conversation I once had with the Attorney General, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, in which he opined that the PM’s moral clarity and force of will had provided Fiji with a unique and perhaps unrepeatable opportunity. ” No other leader has ever had the vision to tackle the divisions between us or the courage to take on the forces holding us back”, he said. The AG’s unwavering loyalty to the PM is based on this fundamental premise and this loyalty has been returned in equal measure. When certain figures came to the PM complaining about the AG and seeking his removal, Bainimarama sent them packing with the savage admonition to come back to him when they did a fraction of the work the AG was doing for the betterment of the country. The term workaholic could have been invented for him.

It has been a unique partnership that now goes into the new Parliament. One of the great shibboleths in Fiji is that the AG is unpopular, even hated, and would lead the PM to defeat unless he cut him loose. The raw figures have proved this wrong. How did it happen? The electorate has undoubtedly recognised his hard work to reform the country. But it’s also a little known fact that the AG gives his personal mobile number to many ordinary people, answers their calls when they ring him and tries to help them navigate a way through the tangled web of Government to solve their problems. He emerges from this election as a political figure of consequence in his own right, having garnered more votes for FijiFirst than any other candidate after Bainimarama and being beaten only by Ro Teimumu Kepa in the overall tally. He is the third most important politician in Fiji in terms of his ability to secure votes and has the political mana to be Deputy Prime Minister, if indeed, that is what is decided.

The duo at the top is supplemented with a range of capable individuals, some of whom were proven performers in the last Government, such as Ratu Inoke Kubuabola, Inia Seruiratu, Dr Neil Sharma and Dr Jiko Luveni,. They’re joined by new additions in the Parliament such as Dr Mahendra Reddy and Pio Tikoduadua, who have been star performers as vote getters in this election. Both these figures are widely respected, Dr Reddy as Head of the Commerce Commission and Tikoduadua as former Permanent Secretary in the PM’s Office, a man with a reputation as a “Mr Fixit” who carried the election fight to Ro Teimumu’s doorstep in Rewa and Tailevu and did her significant electoral damage. These, along with many others, will form the nucleus of a fresh administration that Bainimarama says will redouble its efforts to improve the circumstances of Fijians across the nation.

THE CHURCH OF DIVISION

With his comfortable majority, the PM enjoys both a mandate to implement his program and a cushion in the Parliament to keep him secure on the floor of the House. One of his biggest fears – aside, of course, from defeat – was either the slimmest of winning margins that would shackle his reform program or a coalition that he always ruled out but might have embraced if it meant keeping SODELPA at bay. Yet a solid margin in the Parliament is no insurance against continuing problems in the wider community. And there are ominous signs that while the majority may have embraced him at the ballot box, some of Bainimarama’s opponents – political and religious – remain a brooding, malignant presence. Among these, regrettably, are Bainimarama’s old detractors in the Methodist Church, the biggest religious organisation in Fiji and still a bastion of indigenous supremacy, whatever its protestations to the contrary.

The Methodist Church claims that it has turned its back on partisan politics and has conducted a very public campaign to “heal” what it says are the divisions of the past. Yet last week it made the extraordinary decision to boycott the National Day of Thanksgiving for the release of the 45 Fijian Peacekeepers in Syria. In doing so, the Church has ripped the scab off its slowly healing relationship with the Government and restored its pariah status in the eyes of the Prime Minister, who has now been elected democratically by a huge margin and commands unprecedented authority in the country.

The Methodists were to play a major role in the Service of Thanksgiving at the ANZ National Stadium on election eve. But that morning came the news that its leadership would not be taking part because it regarded the event as “political”. This was a State Event at which the President gave the main address, the Prime Minister had no role and to which the leaders of all political parties were formally invited. It was to give thanks to God for protecting our men and sustaining their families during a terrible personal ordeal. Yet the biggest Christian denomination in Fiji chose to boycott the event. The news didn’t get out and has yet to be reported. Why? Partly because nobody seems to have noticed on the day due to the impressive turnout. And partly because after the scale of Wednesday’s election win, the Methodists are hardly anxious for their partisanship and insensitivity to be exposed.

In the event, the Service proceeded without the Methodist leadership, without the Centenary Church Choir but with many Methodists present who were totally unaware of the boycott. The media didn’t notice and neither, it seems, did the aspiring politicians present – Biman Prasad, Mahendra Chaudhry, Roshika Deo and several others. But guess who else wasn’t there? Yes, SODELPA leader Ro Teimumu Kepa, who sent someone else in her place but whose absence confirms what many suspect – that the Methodist Church is SODELPA at prayer. A church so totally politicised that it was willing to turn its back on a service organised by the State, the Nation – not a political party – to give thanks to God for the release of 45 Fijian hostages held by a terrorist group that routinely beheads its victims. To give thanks for the comfort he gave their families and the whole nation.

There has been no public explanation of the boycott and no comment from the Methodist Church leadership. But it is time for all Fijians – and especially Methodists – to demand that the Church hierarchy explain itself. To explain why it turned its back on the hostages and their families. To explain its gross insult to the Nation. The fury in official ranks is palpable. Because it was not the service that was “political” but the actions of the Methodist Church leadership. Why did they really do it? Was it because it was an interfaith service and the Methodist hierarchy was not prepared to share a stage with Hindus or Muslims? Was it because of the failure of the Church’s campaign for the imposition of a Christian State? Was it because the Methodists became convinced that their own star candidate, Ro Teimumu Kepa, would win the election and there would be no consequences? Answers please.

It is deeply troubling that the hierarchy of the largest Church in Fiji is so out of kilter with the public mood that it would engage in such a blatantly partisan stance. Many Methodists will have voted for Bainimarama. And like other Fijians, they have voted overwhelmingly for religious tolerance, not bigotry. They have voted overwhelmingly for equality, not racially-weighted advantages for some. They have voted overwhelmingly for a just and fair society and everyone joining hands to work together to build a better Fiji. They have turned their backs on the division embodied by SODELPA and its acolytes in the Methodist Church and embraced a better future.

It is a wonderful moment in the life of the nation and a historical watershed – the birth of our first real democracy. Voreqe Bainimarama enters the history books as the man, who through sheer force of will, reset the national compass and led Fiji to a more united future. As the PM says: “There has never been a better time to be Fijian”. And most citizens – no matter what their backgrounds and beliefs – will say a collective Amen to that.

Foreign Ministers of the Melanesian Spearhead Group are set to tip-toe through a diplomatic minefield with news that a MSG delegation – led by Fiji’s Ratu Inoke Kubuabola – will make its long-awaited visit to the Indonesian province of West Papua this week. The mission is fraught with potential difficulty and will require all the diplomatic skills the Ministers can muster as they walk a tightrope between the intense sensitivity of their Indonesian hosts and the equally intense expectations of their Melanesian brothers and sisters in West Papua.

Ratu Inoke is famed for his own political dexterity – a man who has been able to weather successive upheavals in Fijian politics and still be at the centre of decision-making. So arguably no one is better placed to lead this delegation to West Papua and bring it back without fracturing relationships on either side. The stakes are high and the pitfalls perilous. It will be one of the toughest assignments Ratu Inoke has ever undertaken, arguably more so than his patient to-ing and fro-ing with the recalcitrant Australians and New Zealanders on behalf of the Bainimarama Government. Yet, once again, Fiji has a unique opportunity to demonstrate leadership, judgment and wisdom, not only in our own foreign policy but on behalf of all Melanesians, including the people of West Papua. So our best wishes go with him as he tackles one of the biggest challenges of his diplomatic career.

Put simply, the indigenous people of West Papua regard themselves – quite rightly – as being as Melanesian as their kin across the border in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji – the existing members of the MSG. Yet they now find themselves outnumbered in their own country by the Javanese and other Indonesian ethnic groups that have flooded into West Papua since what was then a Dutch colony was invaded and annexed by Indonesia in 1961. That invasion took place in highly controversial circumstances and amid an international outcry. It was eventually agreed that the United Nations oversee a plebiscite of the people of West Papua to finally decide their future. They were given two choices – to remain part of Indonesia or to become an independent nation. But while this vote was officially described as “An Act of Free Choice”, it was conducted not by a poll of the entire population but of about 1,000 men selected by the Indonesian military. This group – described at the time as a consensus of elders – was allegedly coerced into unanimously voting to remain part of Indonesia. And ever since, the result has been rejected by Papuan nationalists, who established what they called the Free Papua Movement (OPM). The OPM ran a campaign of guerrilla warfare against the Indonesian administration over the years in which many thousands of people were killed on both sides. And while this has since tapered off, the independence movement has continued, mainly through peaceful protest and a campaign of international lobbying.

The main pro-independence group now is the West Papua National Coalition for Liberation ( WPNCL) – an umbrella group of several bodies – with a leadership largely outside the country – in Vanuatu, the United States and Europe. This group has now made a formal application to join the MSG and in doing so, has given the regional grouping a massive headache. It can’t really say no altogether because it has already admitted the FLNKS, which is not a Melanesian country but the pro-independence movement in New Caledonia, once a French territory and still part of the French Republic, though with a degree of internal autonomy as a “Special Collectivity” of France. The people of New Caledonia are due to be given a vote on full independence from France sometime between now and 2018. But the people of West Papua are in a completely different situation.

Indonesia regards West Papua as one of its provinces and an integral part of the nation, as integral as Java, Sumatra or anywhere else. It says it will never countenance independence and fights the notion at every turn, regarding it as a threat to national sovereignty. Part of its sensitivity lies in the humiliating manner in which it was forced to surrender East Timor, which it invaded and took from the Portuguese in 1975, but lost in 1999 after a bloody guerrilla war and a similar United Nations vote, though one carried out properly. In the interim, Indonesia has evolved from a military dictatorship into a robust democracy. Yet the Indonesian military still sees itself as the ultimate guardian of the country’s territorial integrity and cracks down hard on any expression of dissidence or revolt over its hold on West Papua.

For Fiji and the other MSG countries, negotiating a way through this minefield is naturally going to be extremely challenging. Philosophically, they cannot exclude a substantial Melanesian population whose representatives want to join the organisation. But neither can they – nor do they want to -upset or damage the relationship of the MSG countries with Indonesia. That relationship ranges from excellent – in the case of Fiji – to somewhat strained, in the case of Vanuatu, which has close ties to the West Papuan leaders in exile, provides them with a base and has strongly argued their case in global forums such as the United Nations. So in essence, the door has to be kept open to both the Indonesian leadership in Jakarta and the leaders of the West Papuan independence movement, a considerable challenge that now rests at the feet of the MSG Foreign Ministers and Ratu Inoke Kubuabola in particular.

At the MSG summit meeting in Noumea last June, the MSG leaders decided to send a delegation led by Ratu Inoke to Indonesia for talks on the membership application by the West Papua National Coalition for Liberation. It’s taken more than six months of delicate negotiations to organise but finally, Jakarta issued a formal invitation for the mission to proceed. On Tuesday (Jan 11th), Ratu Inoke will begin sitting down in the Indonesian capital flanked by the Foreign Ministers of Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, a Special Envoy from Vanuatu and a senior representative of the FLNKS, which is the current chair of the MSG. In a clear sign of how seriously the Indonesians are taking the mission, across the table from them will be the senior leadership – including the President of the Republic, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his Foreign Minister, Marty Natalegawa.

The tenor of these meetings will be crucial. Neither side wants a showdown over West Papua and both will be working hard to ensure a successful outcome. But it is a challenging prospect indeed to expect the Indonesians to accept West Papua joining the MSG, except as part of the Indonesian Republic, which currently has observer status at the MSG. Can a formula be hammered out for the Province to join as a full member, just as the Kanaks of New Caledonia have full membership but France doesn’t? Would the pro-independence exiles accept this? Can they be brought into the tent to both the satisfaction of Indonesia, themselves and the MSG? These are all imponderables at the present time yet must logically be in the mix if a successful outcome is to be achieved.

After these talks will come the most sensitive part of the visit, when Ratu Inoke and the other Foreign Ministers travel from Jakarta to West Papua itself. Their official program for the two day visit hasn’t been officially released. Yet there’s no doubt that the pro-independence lobby sees the visit as a golden opportunity to press its case. A senior West Papuan activist, Octovianus Mote, was recently in Fiji lobbying on behalf of the WPNCL. He said the Movement was “thrilled” that the MSG Foreign Ministers would be coming to the Province and pledged that thousands of Melanesians would turn out to line the road from the airport to welcome them. Just how the Indonesian security forces will respond remains to be seen. But the record shows that they give short shrift to any public manifestation of Melanesian nationalism and especially the raising of the Free West Papuan flag. Octovianus Mote said this would definitely happen at some stage during the visit. The MSG Foreign Ministers will be dearly hoping for restraint on both sides.

In his official announcement of the visit, Ratu Inoke appeared to play down the prospects of any dramatic outcome, stressing cooperation with the Indonesian Government and ruling out any prospect of supporting independence for the Province.“We are happy to undertake this important visit at the invitation of the Indonesian Government to be able to assess the application by WPNCL to become a member of the MSG to enable us to present a recommendation to our Leaders,” Ratu Inoke said. “ (But) we fully respect Indonesia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and we further recognise that West Papua is an integral part of Indonesia. The visit will provide the opportunity to learn firsthand about the situation in West Papua and understand the aspirations of our fellow Melanesian brothers and sisters in Papua with regards to their representation by WPNCL to become a member of the MSG.”

So a softly, softly, vaka malua, approach to this most sensitive of issues – the Foreign Minister and his MSG colleagues desperately hoping their visit passes off without incident and that the whole conundrum can eventually be resolved through patient negotiation and dialogue. From where Fiji sits, it is certainly not the time for rash provocations on the part of the separatist movement, nor a heavy handed, repressive response on the part of the Indonesian security forces. The leitmotif of Fiji’s foreign policy under the Bainimarama Government is to be “friends to all” and that includes both Indonesia and our Melanesian neighbours. Ratu Inoke will certainly be approaching his mission in that spirit and the whole nation will be hoping that he can succeed.

The bellowing Canadian Moose, Dr Marc Edge, has spluttered back into life after a period of self-imposed hibernation with yet another of his perennial attacks on Grubsheet and our fellow blogger, Professor Crosbie Walsh. The former Head of Journalism at USP – who was sacked for misconduct – claims that Croz and I have gone quiet because we have “outlived our usefulness to the regime”. No, Marc, in my own case, I’ve gone quiet primarily because my work is done.

Everything that I set out to achieve when I started Grubsheet at the beginning of 2011 and began highlighting the Bainimarama revolution’s achievements has been accomplished. Fiji has a new Constitution that declares everyone equal and everyone a Fijian, is on course to become a genuine democracy next year, gains ever more international support, is enjoying a period of solid economic growth and has resumed its regional leadership. That was and remains my agenda. I’ve also had the immense satisfaction in these columns of having shone a light on your own disgraceful behaviour at USP, a campaign on behalf of your student victims and against your constant manipulation of the truth that eventually saw you banished from the University for good. Deprived of your work permit, you were also obliged to leave Fiji, your reputation in tatters and in the dead of night.

What a pathetic and deluded figure you present in exile at 23,000 Dyke Road. You continue to perpetuate the lie on the closed Facebook forum, Friends of Fiji Media, that you were not sacked from USP without ever providing an alternative explanation. This lie has been accompanied by repeated threats to sue both Grubsheet and the Fiji Sun without any writ ever being issued. Well, Buddy Boy, the game is up. Because your successor at USP, Dr Ian Weber, has now confirmed to prominent members of the Fijian media what the whole of USP has known all along. That you were sacked. Yes, dismissed, removed, dumped. So can we finally put an end to this bizarre pretence of yours and move on? You are not the principled crusader for media freedom that you cast yourself to be. You are a proven liar, dubbed as such by Professor David Robie, the man you described yourself as the most respected media academic in the South Pacific.

Even your professed campaign for the freedom of the Fijian media is a sham. The Fijian media is officially free. That freedom has been guaranteed by the 2013 Constitution since it was promulgated on September the 6th. A free media, along with freedom of speech, expression and assembly. If certain members of the Fijian media still feel constrained, let them come out and say so. But certainly both the Editor of the Fiji Times, Fred Wesley, and the doyen of radio journalists, Vijay Narayan, both said publicly on a recent Close-Up program on Fiji TV that any previous restrictions have been lifted and neither feel constrained in any way. Who are we to believe? You or them? The exiled, bellowing moose or two of the most respected names in Fijian journalism?

This is not to say that some elements in the Fijian media may be self censoring. But that is for them to explain – to tell the Fijian public why, even with a Constitutional guarantee, they baulk at telling the complete story. Frankly, it’s high time for these journalists to step boldly up to the crease and hit a few runs rather than complain in whispered asides that the game is rigged. It’s time for them to test their Constitutional right.

As things stand, the 961 “Friends of Fiji Media” hide behind a closed Facebook Forum. It is the antithesis of freedom of expression yet it is totally self imposed. They have not been forced behind a firewall by any act of Government oppression. They choose to deliberate in private because they apparently like it that way, seemingly bereft of the courage of their convictions to engage in open debate. This is Marc Edge’s natural habitat and where he is most comfortable. Not a genuine crusader for media freedom but someone waging a personal vendetta – a poisoned little man with a gargantuan ego who victimised some of his students, waged war on a clutch of highly respected academics, was the subject of several internal inquires at USP and was then removed. He can sit in his personal Canadian wasteland bellowing all he likes but that is the simple, unvarnished truth.

One of the last links to the Government that took Fiji to Independence 43 years ago has been severed with the death in Australia of Douglas Walkden-Brown – a member of Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara’s cabinet both before and after Independence. The highly respected agriculturalist known more informally in Fiji as Doug Brown passed away peacefully last Saturday, a week after his 92nd birthday. He had been in failing health in recent months but was still able to enjoy a celebratory glass of birthday champagne with three of his five children – Jennifer, David, Angela, Stephen (Siti) and Andrew. Doug Brown had continued to visit Fiji regularly long after he’d officially retired, spending the Australian winter at the family’s beachside property, Colova, near Korolevu on the Coral Coast. The property is now operated as the Beachouse Backpacker Resort by Andrew Walkden-Brown, Doug’s younger son, who announced his father’s passing in an affectionate Facebook tribute.

Douglas Walkden-Brown was an Australian by birth but became a Fiji citizen at Independence and always regarded himself as a local. He spoke fluent i’Taukei with a heavy Australian accent that never left him but also slipped in and out of Fiji English – the local patois – with consummate ease. He was tall, slim and gregarious, a raconteur with an easy laugh and a string of jokes and anecdotes. It made him easily one of the most popular figures in Government and in the country and he will be remembered fondly by many older Fijians. Doug dedicated much of his life to Fiji, whose people he loved. He shared the strong sense of duty of many of his expatriate contemporaries to give Fiji the best possible start as a new nation. The various political setbacks over the years were hugely disappointing to him, as they were to many others. But he never wavered in his fundamental belief in the decency of ordinary Fijians and their capacity for forgiveness and reconciliation. Nor in his belief that Fiji would eventually overcome its challenges and fulfill its promise as the pre-eminent Pacific Island nation.

Doug Brown – the son of an Australian Methodist clergyman – served in the Royal Australian Air Force in World War Two after graduating from the renowned Hawkesbury Agricultural College. He came to Fiji in 1947 as a Methodist lay missionary and a year later, was appointed principal of the Navuso Agricultural School near Nausori. His own skills as an agriculturalist, combined with his strong leadership skills, made Navuso one of the most respected training facilities in the country. For many years – first under Doug Brown and then his successor and friend, Geoff Bamford – Navuso produced a generation of young farmers, who fanned out over Fiji’s teiteis and farms, using their skills to boost the country’s food production.

A frequent visitor to Fiji in recent years (Photo: Family Facebook)

Navuso in those days was accessible only by boat poled across the Rewa River by one or more of its students. Doug and his equally popular wife, Barbara (nee Curtis), kept a Rover 90 on the Kings Road side of the river and were active participants in the social and community life of Rewa and beyond. Fiji, of course, was a British colony in those days with a substantial European population. Many Europeans kept to themselves but Doug and Barbara had a firmly multiracial outlook and had many friends and acquaintances across the social spectrum. A large number of those friendships were life-long. Indeed, in a striking coincidence, one of Doug’s oldest local friends, Jo Ratuki, also died last Saturday, in different places but on precisely the same day. They’d been mates and work colleagues for more than 60 years.

After his tenure at Navuso ended, Doug acquired his own farm off the Kings Road near Nausori, where he was able to put into practice much of the theory he’d acquired over the years. One of his great loves was rugby – a passion he shared with one of his Methodist contemporaries, the Reverend Doug Fullerton, who was also a prominent rugby administrator. He was President of the Fiji School Rugby Union, President of Rewa Rugby Union and also managed the Fijian national team that toured England, Wales and France in 1964. But another passion beckoned – politics – and Doug’s deep roots in the community and the esteem in which he was held provided the perfect springboard.

The early 1960s were a time of great change in Fiji, as Britain began to wind down its colonial possessions throughout the world and turn its attention towards a future in Europe. An intense period of “localisation” began, in which Fijians were trained to take over the roles performed at the time by expatriates. A political class also had to be developed, inevitably one that represented the various communities – i’Taukei, Indo-Fijians and what were called in those days “General Electors” – Kailoma and people of European descent. By general consensus, the mantle of national leadership fell to the outstanding Fijian of his generation, Ratu KKT Mara or Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, as he later became known. It was his job to negotiate a path forward and accommodate the wishes of Indo-Fijian leaders such as “AD” Patel and Siddiq Koya. It was no easy task. Indo-Fijians were then in the majority in Fiji and their leadership favoured adopting a “common roll” voting system of equal votes of equal value. This was vigorously opposed by the indigenous minority, as well as General Electors and some Indo-Fijians who were closer politically to Ratu Mara. It took several years of painstaking negotiations and two Constitutional Conferences in London – in 1965 and 1970 – to finally come up with a complex electoral formula acceptable to all parties to take Fiji to Independence. More than four decades later, that system is only now being dismantled as Fiji abolishes race-based voting and embraces a united future.

Doug Brown (centre) behind the then Governor, Sir Derek Jakeway, in Ratu Mara’s Council of Ministers in 1967

In the absence of a large pool of suitably qualified locals from which to form a Government, representatives of the General Electors – among them Doug Brown, Charles Stinson, and John Falvey – formed the backbone of Ratu Mara’s first administration after he won the pre-Independence election in September, 1966, and officially became Chief Minister. Doug Brown had successfully contested that election as a candidate for Ratu Mara’s Alliance Party and when he formed his cabinet, Ratu Mara asked him to take the Natural Resources portfolio that he had held himself under the colonial administration. The two men shared a healthy mutual respect. In his memoir, The Pacific Way, Ratu Mara refers to Doug Brown as a “straight talking, down to earth Australian who made an excellent job of Natural Resources”.

And so it was that Fiji went on to gain Independence from Britain on October 10th, 1970, and begin charting its own course. Part of Doug Brown’s task was to supervise the transfer of Fiji’s sugar industry from Australian to local ownership. In August 1972, he introduced a bill in Parliament to establish the Fiji Sugar Corporation which, the following year, took over the operations of the Australian firm, CSR, that had owned and managed Fijian sugar for the best part of a century. In the next government, formed after the first post-Independence elections later in 1972, Doug Brown remained part of Ratu Mara’s winning team, this time as Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forests. He had found his métier and no-one in Fiji was arguably more capable of doing the job. But when he eventually felt obliged to resign for health reasons, yet another “career within a career” beckoned – that of a diplomat.

In 1981, Doug Brown became Fiji’s Consul General in Sydney – the most important commercial centre in the region – and proved to be a highly effective advocate for the new nation. His eventual successor in the job was Peter Thomson, the son of one of Doug’s contemporaries, the late Sir Ian Thomson, a former colonial servant who stayed on in Fiji after Independence as the Independent Chairman of the Sugar Industry. Peter Thomson, who is now Fiji’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, provides the following personal recollection of Doug from New York:

“In my eyes, Doug Brown represented all that was good about the Fiji-Australian relationship in the second half of the 20th century. Whether it was as a hands-on agriculturalist at Navuso, part-time talatala, rugby administrator, Cabinet Minister, or Consul-General in Sydney, he gave his all for Fiji.

Lean, lanky and laconic, speaking Fijian with a heavy Aussie drawl, he was always a man’s man and never lost his sense of humility or humour. I never saw him talk down to anyone, I often observed the care he took to hear his fellow man, and saw how he did not shirk when leadership or clear opinion was required of him. He was someone in whose presence people felt comfortable, whatever their cultural background, whatever their station in life.

I had the honour of taking over from him as Fiji Consul-General in Sydney in 1984, and even though he was of my father’s generation, he showed me more respect and consideration than I deserved, giving me the comfort to run on confidently with the baton that he passed me. Looking back, I see that it was an essential part of his generous nature and commitment to Fiji’s steady development that he would help his successor so, just as he had all those agricultural graduates back in his Navuso days. Like many of his generation in Fiji, he served God, not Mammon. In doing so, he was giving the best of his qualities to both Fiji and Australia, strengthening the binding ties of virtue as well as any man of his time, leaving a role model for those who would strive to repair the bilateral relationship today.”

Like many Australian-born Fijians, Doug Brown was pained by the breakdown of the formal relationship between the two countries because of the events of 2006. Yet he lived to see the first concrete signs of a thaw, as Fiji sets a clear path for elections next year and the new Coalition Government in Canberra responds. Doug lived out his last years without his devoted lifetime partner, Barbara – who predeceased him – but surrounded by an adoring and burgeoning family, his five children plus grandchildren and great-grandchildren. His passing is lamented not only by them but his many friends and admirers, including this writer. Doug and Barbara were life-long friends of my own parents, Peter and Betty Davis, and indeed, were on the docks in Suva one morning in 1952 to farewell them as they left to begin their own missionary work in Lakeba. Doug was the last link to that generation, a generation that placed a big emphasis on service to others. That service was always performed with dedication but also with large doses of humour and wit. The prevailing attitude was that even if life wasn’t meant to be easy, it could at least be fun. There will be many fond memories in Fiji of Doug Brown but his acute sense of humour will be among the fondest. In his Facebook tribute, son Andrew described Doug as “a great father” and a “good mate” who had enjoyed “a full and happy life and was always ready to have a laugh right up to his death”. Surely the best of endings and worthy of a collective “vinaka” from us all.

In the latest chapter of the seven-decade-long search for the legendary missing American aviatrix, Amelia Earhart, investigators in the United States want to locate the descendants of three Fijians who were close associates of a distinguished former head of the Fiji Medical School in Suva. They believe a box may have been left to one of the i’Taukei in the will of the former principal, Dr Kenneth Gilchrist, containing the remains of Amelia Earhart, who vanished over the mid Pacific during her attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world in 1937.

The three Fijians – Laveta Inise Waqanivere, Kalaviti Tukutukunabuka and Unaisi Tianai Reave – worked for Dr Gilchrist, a British surgeon who came to Fiji in the 1940s and headed the Fiji School of Medicine from 1965 to 1970. Dr Gilchrist stayed on in Fiji after Independence and retired to Lami, where he was known locally as “The Professor”. When he eventually died in Suva in 1992, Waqanivere, Tukutukunabuka and Reave were the beneficiaries of his will and evidently received his personal effects. The American investigators believe those effects may have included a box – either the original Gilbertese box made of Kanawa wood or some other container – holding human bones that they want to test with the latest DNA technology to establish definitively whether they are those of Amelia Earhart.

None of the three Fijians are now believed by the American investigators to be still alive. But they hope their families and friends may know what happened to the bones. Were they removed from the original Kanawa box? Were they buried or placed in another container? If they were buried, does anyone know where the burial place is? Is someone still using the box for another purpose? The investigators are appealing to anyone in Fiji with any knowledge whatsoever to come forward and help solve aviation’s greatest mystery.

The bones come from a partial skeleton recovered in 1940 from uninhabited Gardner Island, now Nikumaroro, in the Phoenix Group of what is now Kiribati. Mounting evidence suggests that Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, may have carried out a controlled landing on the reef at Nikumaroro when they disappeared during the Trans Pacific crossing of their epic round-the-world journey. The dominant theory has it that they subsequently died of thirst on the barren atoll and their remains were devoured by the giant coconut crabs that roam the island.

The partial skeleton was packed into a Kanawa Box by a British colonial servant, Gerald Gallagher, and taken to Suva. On the instructions of the then Governor and High Commissioner for the Western Pacific, Sir Harry Luke, the bones were examined at the Central Medical School in Tamavua, which later became the Fiji Medical School.

At first, they were thought to be those of a man but subsequent tests revealed them to be those of a middle-aged woman. Amelia Earhart was 41 at the time she disappeared.

Two crucial pieces of evidence have since led the American investigators to suspect that the remains brought to Suva may be those of Earhart. During a search of the island, they found an American woman’s shoe of a type popular in the 1930s and that Earhart had been photographed wearing.

Just as intriguing, they’ve discovered a photograph taken on Nikumaroro Reef in 1939 of what appears to be a metal part from a Lockheed Electra aircraft of the type that Earhart and Noonan were using to make the trans Pacific crossing.

The missing bones -somewhere in Fiji- are now the key to solving the mystery. When they were brought to Suva – then the centre of the British colonial presence in the Pacific – the technology didn’t exist to make a positive identification. They were evidently passed around the medical establishment, first to Dr Gilchrist’s predecessor at the FMS, Dr David Hoodless. His examination notes throw up another startling piece of information. Because according to one informant who’s seen them, he makes reference to a hole in the skull beneath one of the eye sockets. It evidently matches a hole drilled into Amelia Earhart’s skull when she was alive to try to relieve the pain she suffered from recurring sinusitis.

When Dr Gilchrist took over the School, he inherited the box of bones. Recollections exist of them “sitting in the corner and gathering dust”. But somewhere along the line, they disappeared. Stories continue to circulate locally about what might have happened. Were the bones mislaid or did someone covet the Kanawa box they were in and dump them? Some of these stories implicate Suva personalities who are still alive and who because of the defamation laws, can’t be identified. Yet it’s not the box that’s at issue but what was in it. And the investigators hope that any cone of silence can now be lifted.

One account has it that the celebrated Dr Lindsay Verrier, the late medical practitioner, former politician and well known Suva eccentric added the box to his collection after presumably dispensing with the bones. Did Dr Verrier take it but then leave it to someone else when he died in 1981? Has some other person got the box and any clue to where the bones might be? They too are being asked to come forward.

Because seven decades on, the technology now exists – through DNA matching with the Earhart family – to solve the mystery once and for all. Dr Hoodless and Dr Gilchrist could never have imagined during their working lives that such a thing might one day be possible. So it’s not difficult to imagine the box of bones being cast aside and forgotten. No accusation is made of negligence or neglect. The American investigators from TIGHAR – the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery – are just hoping that someone, somewhere, knows what happened.

For nearly eight decades, the whole world has wondered what happened to Earhart and Noonan after they set out on July 2nd 1937 from Lae, in northern New Guinea, for Howland Island, a small dot in the mid Pacific. Noonan was one of the greatest navigators of his time, a man who had helped Pan American pioneer their famed Clipper flying boat services to the Far East. Half a century before the development of GPS – the Global Positioning System that uses satellites to establish even a smart phone user’s position anywhere on earth – Noonan navigated by the stars at night and the sun by day. So when he and Earhart rumbled into the air from Lae, their Lockheed bursting with 1600 gallons of fuel, he had to chart a course across more than four thousand kilometres of ocean to a sliver of land. If he missed, catastrophe awaited.

To assist the effort, a US coastguard vessel, Itasca, was anchored off Howland, the only island in the Phoenix Group with a landing strip. It provided a vital radio link with Earhart and Noonan to help them find their “needle in a haystack”. We know from those transmissions that the Lockheed made it into the general area. But it was a day in which scattered clouds were casting dark shadows on the water which, from the air, would have resembled low-lying islands. Running low on fuel, Earhart and Noonan grew increasingly desperate, unable to hear the coastguard vessel, though audible themselves. In one of their last radio transmissions, Earhart told the coast guard radio operator – “We must be on you, but cannot see you—but gas is running low. Have been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet.” From the sea, the plane was never sighted. The two aviation pioneers simply vanished. And 76 years later, no-one knows what really happened.

Amelia Earhart was already a legend when she disappeared – a tall, attractive blonde who captured the world’s attention with her daring feats and has held it ever since. The actress Hilary Swank perpetuated the fascination when she played her in the movie Amelia in 2009.

Born in 1897, she’d become the first woman to fly across the Atlantic in 1928, earning herself a tickertape parade in New York City and the Distinguished Flying Cross. The prize of becoming the first woman to fly around the world awaited and the whole world watched as she and Noonan set out from Oakland, California and set a course east around the globe, across America, the Atlantic, Africa, the Middle and Far East, down to New Guinea. The final leg across the Pacific was the most challenging and a hurdle they failed to meet. The search for them – at $4,000,000 – was the most expensive in history to that time, vessels crisscrossing huge distances of ocean in the area where they were thought to have come down.

But where were they? Did they eventually run out of fuel and crash into the ocean? Could they have found an alternative island and tried to land? Could they have survived such a landing?Were they captured by the Japanese, as some speculation had it, in the febrile atmosphere leading up to World War Two? Did they survive and vanish, publicity shy, into Middle America, as another preposterous theory has it? The speculation persists to this day. So no surprise that it’s Earhart’s fellow American aviators who are still doggedly pursing the search for answers.

Increasingly, the investigators at TIGHAR have honed in on Nikumaroro, mounting expensive expeditions to comb the island for evidence that Earhart and Noonan were there. The belief is mounting that having been unable to locate Howland because of a navigation error on Noonan’s part, the pair headed off in another direction and stumbled on Nikumaroro. It’s a low flat atoll nestled around a lagoon but covered with thick underbrush and substantial trees that would have made a landing impossible. Yet, intriguingly, the TIGHAR investigators found that the reef around the island is flat enough in parts to cope with a controlled landing at low tide. While the Lockheed’s tires may have burst, the undercarriage may well have remained intact.

If this happened, the Lockheed would have eventually broken up over time as it was pounded by the waves but not immediately. Did Earhart and Noonan survive such a controlled landing on the reef? Was the aircraft in good enough shape to keep at least one engine recharging the batteries of their radio? There’s some evidence that this may well have been the case. TIGHAR has established that for six days after their disappearance on July 2nd 1937, radio signals were recorded by several monitors coming from bearings that were later found to be in the vicinity of Nikumaroro. It’s led the investigators to suspect that for the first few days of their ordeal, at least, Earhart and Noonan appear to have been able to use their radio aboard the plane at periods of low tide.

Then last year, the investigators discovered a photograph taken in 1939 on the reef on Nikumaroro that appears to show a part from the landing gear of a Lockheed Electra. Only 56 Electras were ever made with this part, including Earhart’s plane. The design was changed for the subsequent 93. TIGHAR has also investigated whether other Electras may have been in the vicinity at any time. Yet neither before nor since 1937 does any record exist of an Electra coming within 1000 miles of this remote part of the Pacific. The aircraft type was common at the time in Australia and New Zealand but none were flown across the Pacific. They were all transported by ship. How else did a part from a 1930s Lockheed Electra get onto the reef at Nikumororo if it didn’t come from Earhart’s plane?

And how plausible is the theory of a controlled reef landing? Well, remarkably, it had happened before. And there’s also ample evidence that Amelia Earhart knew about it. Just a year earlier, in 1936, a twin-engine Monospar Croydon aircraft, which was much the same size as Earhart’s Electra, strayed off course on a flight from Darwin, Australia to Kupang in Indonesia. It landed safely on a reef at low tide and was barely damaged. To compound the good fortune, there was a fishing boat nearby and all the passengers were rescued. How do we know that Earhart is likely to have been aware of this incident?Because the story was published in the December, 1936 issue of Flight magazine, the bible of aviation at the time.

So the theory goes that for six days, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noon were able to reach their Electra on the reef at low tide and make some crude radio transmissions that the ship’s searching for them didn’t or couldn’t pick up but were recorded elsewhere and later found to have come from Nikumororo. Then as their aircraft gradually succumbed to the seas, they retreated to the island in the hope that their searchers would eventually find them.

There was a shipwreck on the reef, the SS Norwich City, a British freighter that ran aground in 1929, and they would have also found evidence of previous human habitation. Presuming that neither had been badly hurt in the landing, they might have been able to survive indefinitely had they been able to find adequate food and water to sustain them after their supplies ran out. But as fate would have it, Nikumaroro was afflicted by the same curse that afflicts so many Pacific atolls – a total absence of fresh water. It brought an end to the only prolonged attempt at settlement that began two years later in 1939 and wound up in desperation in 1963.

If no rain fell in the first few days of July 1937 or there was no way to effectively capture it, Earhart and Noon would have realised with mounting horror that they were doomed. They were going to die of thirst. It would have also dawned on them that their bodies would be consumed by the giant and voracious crabs that are also a curse of Nikumaroro. And that’s precisely what appears to have happened, assuming the TIGHAR theory is correct. We’ll only know for certain when and if the bones in Fiji can be found and examined, which is what makes the current search so important.

As things stand, the mystery of what happened to the box of bones brought to Suva in 1940 is eclipsed only by the mystery of Earhart and Noonan’s disappearance itself. The British medicos and colonial officers in Fiji who might have been able to shed more light have all died. A thorough search of the School of Medicine conducted at TIGHAR’s request has produced nothing. So the American investigators have cast their net wider, appealing to anyone in Fiji who has any information that might uncover the bones to come forward.

From what can be established, they were last seen in about 1969, when a TIGHAR informant says he was shown them by Dr Guy Hawley, another Fiji School of Medicine luminary. By then, according to this account, the bones were in a beer carton, having been parted from their coveted Kanawa box.Someone else now clearly has the box but who has the bones? Dr Gilchrist was an avid collector of fossil shells and donated collections of these to the Fiji Museum and institutions overseas. Did he keep the Nikumororo bones at his home in Lami until his death in 1992? No-one seems to know the answer. He had no family so his estate passed to his employees. The administrators of the estate have no recollection of the bones being part of it. So even if they were in Lami, they appear to have vanished. They’re certainly not in the estate of Guy Hawley. So the TIGHAR investigators really have only one remaining hope – that someone who knew the beneficiaries of Dr Gilchrist’s will come forward, the friends and families of Laveta Inise Waqanivere, Kalaviti Tukutukunabuka and Uniasi Tianai Reave. Because only when the bones are located can the mystery be finally solved.

WHAT WE NEED TO SOLVE THE MYSTERY

By Michael Elliot-Jones.

TIGHAR researcher

From what we can ascertain, all three of Dr Gilchrist’s workers have been deceased for some years. As a result, to find the bones and the box, we need to find their families and friends.

We have three basic questions:

(I)Do you know where the bones are? If so, please contact us via the addresses listed below.

(II)If not, did you ever hear what happened to the bones? If they were simply buried somewhere, we’d like to know where. We can dig them up. Because our purpose is to obtain a DNA sample. As long as at least one of the teeth is still intact, we can probably get a useable DNA sample. But the searchers need all of the bones to establish that they have the correct skeleton. Having all the bones, and having them fit the detailed description reported by Dr. Hoodless is as close to a real provenance as we are likely to get because the bones apparently were removed from the Fiji School of Medicine by someone unknown. The file on the bones in the FSM should have been updated when the bones were taken out of the FSM, but that file does not contain any record of the removal of the bones.

Here is the list of bones that was compiled by Dr. Hoodless:

(1) a skull with the right zygoma and malar bones broken off; (2) mandible with only four teeth in position; (3) part of the right scapula; (4) the first thoracic vertebra; 5) portion of a rib (? 2nd right rib); (6) left humerus; 7) right radius; (8) right innominate bone; (9) right femur; (10) left femur; (11) right tibia; (12) right fibula; and (13) the right scaphoid bone of the foot.

It is still possible that the bones were not removed by some unknown person, and that they are still hidden in some obscure corner in the FSM.

(III)Who has the box? We think it was about 30x30x80cm or a little larger with handles at both ends. It was hand-made by a Gilbert Islander who was among those who colonised Nikumororo after 1939, of a tropical wood, Cordia subcordata often known as kanawa, from a tree which was felled on Nikumororo while clearing for coconut palms. Locating that box may create leads.

Finally, why are we searching for the bones? Because there are only two possible pieces of evidence that will decisively confirm that Amelia Earhart landed, and eventually died on Nikumororo.

First, if DNA from the bones matches DNA from Earhart family descendants, that essentially proves the point. And, that’s what this story is about.

Second, if searchers on Nikumororo find Lockheed Electra parts showing serial numbers known to have been installed in Amelia Earhart’s’s plane – serial numbers for engines, propellers, and the Lockheed builder’s plate – that also proves the point. But that’s another story.

Any clues, hints, suggestions etc. on how to find the bones will help the searchers. You can email us at: the_bones@sonic.net.

Or send letters in hard copy to the Fiji Sun marked: “The search for Amelia Earhart”

The final version of the 2013 Constitution that will underpin the first genuine democracy in Fijian history has been released to the public. His Excellency the President will give his assent to the document on September 6th. It will be the supreme law of the country and pave the way for elections by September 30th 2014 conducted, for the first time, on the basis of equal votes of equal value. It is in line with the constitutions of some of the world’s most liberal democracies and provides a framework for the development of a modern, progressive state.

As previously flagged by the Prime Minister, Voreqe Bainimarama, the final version differs from the Draft Constitution by containing specific provisions that guarantee and strengthen the protection of communally-owned i’Taukei, Rotuman and Banaban lands. During the consultation process that followed the release of the Draft in March, a large number of submissions were received calling for explicit protection clauses. These have been accepted and incorporated into the final document. They provide greater protection and security for I’Taukei, Rotuman and Banaban land than ever before.

In addition, for the first time, an extra provision gives any landowner the right to a fair share of royalties derived from the exploitation of resources beneath the surface.

The 98-page constitutional document in English has also, for the first time, been translated into the two main vernacular languages – i’Taukei and contemporary Hindi. In the 15 days before His Excellency the President gives his assent on September 6th, members of the public are invited to read the vernacular versions and provide feedback on their accuracy. Some of the legal terms and phraseology in the English language do not have equivalent words in the vernacular and therefore may be open to interpretation.

The Constitution provides for a single chamber 50-member Parliament – up from 45 in the Draft document- which will be the country’s supreme authority and be elected on the basis of one person, one vote, one value. Elections are to be held every four years and every Fijian over the age of 18 is entitled to vote.

In another alteration to the Draft document, individual regional constituencies are abolished. There will be one national constituency covering the whole of Fiji, as in The Netherlands and Israel. And every voter will get one vote, choosing the candidate who they believe best serves their interests under a proportional representation system.

A Prime Minister who commands the party with the most seats in Parliament will head the elected Government and, in line with current practice, a President will be the Head of State and perform the ceremonial function of Commander in Chief of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces.

Among the Constitution’s major provisions are:

·A common and equal citizenry.

·A voting system of equal votes of equal value.

·A secular state and religious liberty.

·An independent and impartial judiciary and equal access to the law.

·The right to legal aid assistance.

·Specific protection of the ownership of I’Taukei and Rotuman lands and recognition of their unique culture, customs, traditions and language.

·The protection of the rights of leaseholders.

·Specific recognition of the culture and language of Indo-Fijians, other Pacific islanders and other immigrants and settlers.

·A Bill of Rights containing specific provisions guaranteeing a range of civil and political rights and, for the first time, social and economic rights. These include the right to education, economic participation, a just minimum wage, transport, housing, food and water, health and social security.

·The compulsory teaching of the i’Taukei and Fiji Hindi languages at primary school level, along with English as the common language.

·The right to multiple citizenship but a provision that only Fijian citizens be entitled to stand for Parliament.

·The right to fair employment practices.

·The right to join, form or campaign for a political party.

·The right to privacy.

·An Accountability and Transparency Commission which, for the first time, will hold all public office holders accountable.

·A Code of Conduct for public office holders.

·A provision requiring public office holders such as civil servants, members of the disciplined forces and trade unionists to resign before contesting a seat in Parliament.

The release of the Constitution follows a community consultation process during which the Attorney General, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, and his team conducted 19 public meetings in urban, rural and maritime areas throughout Fiji, including Vanua Levu, Taveuni, Kadavu, the Mamanucas and the Yasawas.

Submissions were also sought and 1,093 written submissions were received.

The Government urges all Fijians to read the full Constitution document, which is available from the following sources:

RECOGNISING the indigenous people or the iTaukei, their ownership of iTaukei lands, their unique culture, customs, traditions and language;

RECOGNISING the indigenous people or the Rotuman from the island of Rotuma, their ownership of Rotuman lands, their unique culture, customs, traditions and language;

RECOGNISING the descendants of the indentured labourers from British India and the Pacific Islands, their culture, customs, traditions and language; and

RECOGNISING the descendants of the immigrants and settlers to Fiji, their culture, customs, traditions and language,

DECLARE that we are all Fijians united by common and equal citizenry;

RECOGNISE the Constitution as the supreme law of our country that provides the framework for the conduct of Government and all Fijians;

COMMIT ourselves to the recognition and protection of human rights, and respect for human dignity;

DECLARE our commitment to justice, national sovereignty and security, social and economic wellbeing, and safeguarding our environment;

HEREBY ESTABLISH THIS CONSTITUTION FOR THE REPUBLIC OF FIJI.

PROTECTION OF i‘TAUKEI, ROTUMAN AND BANABAN LANDS AND OTHER LAND:

28.—(1) The ownership of all iTaukei land shall remain with the customaryowners of that land and iTaukei land shall not be permanently alienated, whether by sale, grant, transfer or exchange, except to the State in accordance with section 27.

(2) Any iTaukei land acquired by the State for a public purpose after the commencement of this Constitution under section 27 or under any written law shall revert to the customary owners if the land is no longer required by the State.

(3)The ownership of all Rotuman land shall remain with the customary owners of that land and Rotuman land shall not be permanently alienated, whether by sale, grant, transfer or exchange, except to the State in accordance with section 27.

(4)Any Rotuman land acquired by the State for a public purpose after the commencement of this Constitution under section 27 or under any written law shall revert to the customary owners if the land is no longer required by the State.

(5)The ownership of all Banaban land shall remain with the customary owners of that land and Banaban land shall not be permanently alienated, whether by sale, grant, transfer or exchange, except to the State in accordance with section 27.

(6)Any Banaban land acquired by the State for a public purpose after the commencement of this Constitution under section 27 or under any written law shall revert to the customary owners if the land is no longer required by the State.

29.—(1) All ownership of land, and all rights and interests in land, including land tenancies and leases, that existed immediately before the commencement of this Constitution, shall continue to exist under this Constitution.

Protection of rights and interests in land

(2) All land lessees and tenants have the right to not have their lease or tenancy agreements terminated other than in accordance with their lease or tenancy agreements, and any amendment to any law governing lease or tenancy agreements shall not adversely affect any existing lease or tenancy agreements.

(3) All land that existed as freehold land immediately before the commencement of this Constitution shall remain as freehold land, unless it is sold or is acquired by the State for a public purpose under section 27.

RIGHT OF LANDOWNERS TO FAIR SHARE OF ROYALTIES FOR EXTRACTION OF MINERALS:

30.—(1) All minerals in or under any land or water, are owned by the State, provided however, that the owners of any particular land (whether customary or freehold), or of any particular registered customary fishing rights shall be entitled to receive a fair share of royalties or other money paid to the State in respect of the grant by the State of rights to extract minerals from that land or the seabed in the area of those fishing rights.

(2) A written law may determine the framework for calculating fair shares under subsection (1), taking into account all relevant factors, including the following—

(a)any benefits that the owners received or may receive as a result of mineral exploration or exploitation;

(b)the risk of environmental damage;

(c)any legal obligation of the State to contribute to a fund to meet the cost of preventing, repairing or compensating for any environmental damage;

(d)the cost to the State of administering exploration or exploitation rights;

THE SECULAR STATE:

4.—(1) Religious liberty, as recognised in the Bill of Rights, is a founding principle of the State.

(2) Religious belief is personal.

(3) Religion and the State are separate, which means— (a)the State and all persons holding public office must treat all religions equally; (b)the State and all persons holding public office must not dictate any religious belief;

(c)the State and all persons holding public office must not prefer or advance, by any means, any particular religion, religious denomination, religious belief, or religious practice over another, or over any non- religious belief; and

(d)no person shall assert any religious belief as a legal reason to disregard this Constitution or any other law.

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC RIGHTS:

Right to education

31.—(1) Every person has the right to— (a)early childhood education; (b)primary and secondary education; and (c)further education.

(2) The State must take reasonable measures within its available resources to achieve the progressive realisation of the right—

(a)to free early childhood, primary, secondary and further education; and (b)to education for persons who were unable to complete their primary and secondary education.

(3) Conversational and contemporary iTaukei and Fiji Hindi languages shall be taught as compulsory subjects in all primary schools.

(4) The State may direct any educational institution to teach subjects pertaining to health, civic education and issues of national interest, and any educational institution must comply with any such directions made by the State.

(5)In applying any right under this section, if the State claims that it does not have the resources to implement the right, it is the responsibility of the State to show that the resources are not available.

Right to economic participation

32.—(1) Every person has the right to full and free participation in the economic life of the nation, which includes the right to choose their own work, trade, occupation, profession or other means of livelihood.

(2) The State must take reasonable measures within its available resources to achieve the progressive realisation of the rights recognised in subsection (1).

(3) To the extent that it is necessary, a law may limit, or may authorise the limitation of, the rights set out in subsection (1).

Right to work and a just minimum wage

33.—(1) The State must take reasonable measures within its available resources to achieve the progressive realisation of the right of every person to work and to a just minimum wage.

(2)In applying any right under this section, if the State claims that it does not have the resources to implement the right, it is the responsibility of the State to show that the resources are not available.

Right to health

38.—(1) The State must take reasonable measures within its available resources to achieve the progressive realisation of the right of every person to health, and to the conditions and facilities necessary to good health, and to health care services, including reproductive health care.

(2)A person must not be denied emergency medical treatment.

(3)In applying any right under this section, if the State claims that it does not have the resources to implement the right, it is the responsibility of the State to show that the resources are not available.

Right to reasonable access to transportation

34.—(1) The State must take reasonable measures within its available resources to achieve the progressive realisation of the right of every person to have reasonable access to transportation.

(2) In applying any right under this section, if the State claims that it does not have the resources to implement the right, it is the responsibility of the State to show that the resources are not available.

Right to housing and sanitation

35.—(1) The State must take reasonable measures within its available resources to achieve the progressive realisation of the right of every person to accessible and adequate housing and sanitation.

(2) In applying any right under this section, if the State claims that it does not have the resources to implement the right, it is the responsibility of the State to show that the resources are not available.

Right to adequate food and water

36.—(1) The State must take reasonable measures within its available resources to achieve the progressive realisation of the right of every person to be free from hunger, to have adequate food of acceptable quality and to clean and safe water in adequate quantities.

(2) In applying any right under this section, if the State claims that it does not have the resources to implement the right, it is the responsibility of the State to show that the resources are not available.

Right to social security schemes

37.—(1) The State must take reasonable measures within its available resources to achieve the progressive realisation of the right of every person to social security schemes, whether private or public, for their support in times of need, including the right to such support from public resources if they are unable to support themselves and their dependants.

(2)In applying any right under this section, if the State claims that it does not have the resources to implement the right, it is the responsibility of the State to show that the resources are not available.

It’s taken Radio Australia more than 60 hours to broadcast a landmark speech given on Monday night to the Australia Fiji Business Forum by the Deputy Opposition Leader and Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, Julie Bishop. (see previous posting) In that speech, Ms Bishop signaled a radical overhaul of Australia’s policy towards Fiji if the Coalition wins the forthcoming Australian election. But the evidence shows that Radio Australia chose to willfully ignore it, broadcasting instead two pieces on its public affairs program, Pacific Beat, that were highly critical of Fiji.

This morning, Grubsheet blew the whistle on this blatant act of censorship with the previous piece. At 5.14 AM Australian Eastern Standard Time, we sent the link to one of Julie Bishop’s principal advisors, Sam Riordan. At 6.21 AM, we sent the link to senior ABC executive, Alan Sunderland, who handles formal complaints on behalf of the news division, which includes Radio Australia. At 7.59 AM, Alan Sunderland sent Grubsheet an email saying he would “follow up”on the story and pointing out an inaccuracy in our original account. Then at 9.12 AM, Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat finally posted a large slab of Ms Bishops address, more than 60 hours after she’d delivered it. It ran it without comment. After all, what on earth could the broadcaster’s journalists say?

As detailed in the previous posting, we know that the Australia Network’s Pacific Correspondent, Sean Dorney, sent the Bishop speech to Radio Australia on Monday night. What happened to it? We still haven’t had an answer from ABC management. But we have clear evidence that senior Radio Australia journalist, Bruce Hill, knew about it but chose not to report it. Instead of broadcasting what was a major change of policy signaled by the Deputy Opposition Leader were the Coalition to win the forthcoming election, Hill chose instead to carry an interview with a former Fiji opposition leader, Mick Beddoes, lashing Fiji’s Foreign Minister, Ratu Inoke Kubuabola, for his own speech at the Business Forum. Where Julie Bishop had praised Ratu Inoke in her speech, Mick Beddoes lacerated him. Bruce Hill needs to explain himself, as does the entire Radio Australia news team. Because without a doubt, it is one of the most blatant instances of censorship and news manipulation Grubsheet has ever witnessed.

The timeline above speaks for itself. Julie Bishop is advised, the ABC management is advised. Within a couple of hours, Radio Australia finds the “missing” tape and puts it to air. It is not good enough and the whole episode demands an explanation. There should be an inquiry into why Radio Australia chose not to broadcast a tape that was in its possession for nearly three days. There should be a inquiry into why the rest of the ABC – domestic radio and television, including the ABC’s 24 hours news channel – also ignored the story. Only Sean Dorney emerges from this episode with any credibility at all. Having faithfully reported Ratu Inoke’s original speech, he faithfully reported Julie Bishop’s speech for Australia Network. The rest of the ABC – including its overseas radio service – should hang its head in shame.

No chance of that though, judging from Bruce Hill’s Facebook page, where he denies none of the above and revels in the adulation of his camp followers. These include fellow traveler and Facebook “friend” Barbara Dreaver, Television New Zealand’s equally biased Pacific correspondent. Bruce wants someone to send him the hard copy of the Fiji Sun, in which this article was reprinted, so that he can “laminate it and put it on his wall”. Dreaver suggests that his transgression might attract a ban by the Fijian Government or an enforced stay at the army barracks in Suva, evidently a badge of honour in these circles. It’s an idea that Hill “likes”, just as he “likes” the suggestion from another “friend” that Julie Bishop’s comments didn’t constitute a change of policy.

We didn’t say it was a change of policy. It was a change of attitude. And because Bishop may well be the Australian Foreign Minister after September the 7th, the fact remains that Bishop’s Brisbane speech was important and worth reporting. Instead, it was evidently quashed by Hill, who thinks it’s all great fun and wants to peg his ethical lapse to his wall. Good work, Bruce.

Bruce HillFriday near Melbourne, VictoriaCould one of my Fiji friends kindly mail me the two pages of today’s edition of the Sun dedicated to having a go at me? I’m keen to laminate it and put it on my wall. Message me and I will send you my address.Share19 people like this.

Murray Hill Well we’ve always known you were a typical leftie drone.Friday at 5:13pm · 1

Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson yay! congrats… what an honor! I want to read the story asap Friday at 5:28pm · 1

Lice Movono Rova Send me ur address!Friday at 5:32pm via mobile · 1

Kate Schuetze Two pages! You must be doing a good job then Friday at 6:00pm via mobile · 1

James Morrow You must post this when you get it. What the hell’d you do?Friday at 6:01pm

Murray Hill Didn’t say what he was told to of course.Friday at 6:02pm

Bethany Keats Awww what you do now?Friday at 6:04pm via mobile

Kate Schuetze Mr Davis forgets one very important detail…. How can it be a major shift in Australian government policy if it was even a comment from the actual foreign minister??! Entertaining tho http://www.fijisun.com.fj/2013/08/02/the-abc-of-propaganda/Friday at 6:05pm via mobile · 1

Allan Grant Oh, you’ll have to share it with us, Mr. Hill. Or the link at least.Friday at 8:59pm

Bruce Hill See the link Kate posted above.Friday at 9:04pm

Allan Grant As a low-information Yank, am I understanding this correctly? A woman who is in parliament but not in the governing party, not in power, has no authority to speak for the Australian government, has just signaled a change in Australian foreign policy that your Foreign Minister has not? Oh, and you didn’t report it? Is that what the rant’s about? Sheesh!Friday at 9:49pm · Edited · 1

Kate Schuetze Yes apparently an ‘opposition MP’ can also be referred to an ‘alternative Foreign Minister’ but only in coup-coup land! Friday at 9:42pm via mobile · 1

Compelling evidence has emerged that Radio Australia – the overseas service of Australia’s public broadcaster, the ABC – has suppressed public comments in which the country’s alternative foreign minister outlined a radical change of Australian policy towards Fiji. Grubsheet can reveal that when Julie Bishop, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, made a speech on Monday evening in Brisbane which was supportive of Fiji and signaled a change in Australian policy, it was recorded by the ABC’s Pacific Correspondent Sean Dorney and sent to Radio Australia. But the recording, indeed the entire account of what Julia Bishop said, never made it to air, either on Radio Australia News or the broadcaster’s influential public affairs program, Pacific Beat. Dorney says that he filed a piece for Australia Network, the ABC’s external television arm, which was broadcast. Yet there was nothing on the external radio service at all, in spite of the fact that it casts itself as one of the most respected and trusted sources of information in the Asia Pacific.

Here was the first significant change in official Australian attitudes towards Fiji in the six and a half years since Voreqe Bainimarama’s takeover. In her Brisbane speech, Julia Bishop was extraordinarily warm towards Fiji (see previous posting). She said that if the Coalition won the election, it would fully re-engage with Fiji, including re-establishing full diplomatic ties, and would “take guidance” from Fiji about how Australia could best assist the Bainimarama Government introduce the first genuine democracy in the country’s history next year. By conventional news standards the world over, it signaled a dramatic change in Australian official attitude and deserved to receive the widest coverage. But Radio Australia chose to ignore it.

Instead, it ran two items highly critical of the Fijian Government, both by the same reporter, Bruce Hill. As is clear from the emails published below, Bruce Hill was fully aware of the Shadow Foreign Minister’s speech and presumably the import of what she had said. What the regional viewing audience and the Australian taxpayer is now entitled to know is by whose authority Hill, and the rest of the Radio Australia editorial team, chose to overlook a major shift in Australian attitude that, in Julie Bishop’s own words, will result in a radical change in public policy after the election.

The incident raises grave questions about the editorial independence of Radio Australia. It is especially egregious in that it involves the overt censorship of an important speech by the senior opposition politician who may well determine Australia’s foreign policy after the election due in the coming weeks.

Grubsheet has long alleged a campaign of wilful and sustained bias against Fiji by Radio Australia, which also broadcasts on the FM band in Fiji courtesy of the Fijian Government. Indeed we have lodged complaints, in a personal capacity, about that bias through the ABC’s formal complaints procedure and been rebuffed. Yet previous instances pale into insignificance beside evidence that Radio Australia is willing to subvert the political process in Australia and deny a voice to the alternative government. It has deprived the prospective Foreign Minister of the opportunity – on the public airwaves – to enunciate what could well be an imminent and crucially important change of policy in relation to one of Australia’s most intractable foreign affairs challenges.

It is more than a grave editorial lapse. It is also contrary to law. On the available evidence, it’s a case of the publicly funded broadcaster taking a partisan position in a manner that contravenes every aspect of the ABC’s Charter. This legally requires it – under an act of Parliament – to report without fear or favour in the interests of every Australian. Yet not for the first time, as we’ll see, the evidence is that Radio Australia is a puppet of its political paymasters. And it cannot be long before the full force of the Opposition ( and perhaps the next government), the rest of the Australian Parliament, the country’s media regulators and the ABC itself come crashing down on those who indulged in such a blatant attempt to manipulate the news agenda and deprive the Asia Pacific audience of information that it deserves and needs to know.

Before Grubsheet lays out the evidence, we need to make a declaration of personal and professional interest. Grubsheet (Graham Davis) is a Fijian citizen, as well as being Australian, and was born in Fiji. We have long supported the Bainimarama Government, convinced that its multiracial agenda, anti-corruption drive and service delivery for ordinary people is infinitely preferable to the racist, self-interested and corrupt administration that it removed. Having long advocated that Australia engage with Fiji rather than punish it for Bainimarama’s takeover, we were approached in September 2012 by the Washington-based American company, Qorvis Communications, to advise it on its Fiji account – one of a number of sovereign clients it represents around the world. We unashamedly accepted the offer, keen to assist Fiji and convinced that the country is on course for a genuine democracy next year that will finally take it forward after a quarter of a century of false promise. So, yes, we are on the Qorvis payroll and, yes, our work for Qorvis involves promoting the Bainimarama Government. Yet it is neither here nor there when it comes to our underlying complaint about Radio Australia manipulating the news. This is a case of basic journalistic integrity and practice. And from where we sit – a journalist of 40 years standing – this has been grievously compromised.

Indeed, we are as much aghast about the negative impact on the regional audience’s right to know as we are about the silencing of Julie Bishop and the negative impact on Fiji of Radio Australia’s extraordinary behaviour. Yet our own experience tells us that Australia’s international broadcaster has form when it comes to manipulating the news agenda in favour of its paymasters in Canberra.

Grubsheet spent almost three years on the Radio Australia news desk from 1975 to 1978. The first few months of this period was during the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, which we now know was sanctioned by the Australian Government in a most unconscionable manner. This included turning a blind eye to the murder of five Australian journalists by the invading forces. Grubsheet was present on at least one occasion on the Radio Australia news desk in Melbourne when Australia’s then ambassador to Indonesia, Richard Woolcott, rang to request that a particular story on the progress of the invasion be doctored. That request or demand, depending on your point of view, was adhered to. To Grubsheet’s youthful eyes (we were 22 when the invasion took place), it was a lifelong lesson about the extent to which the Australian establishment is occasionally prepared to interfere with a broadcaster that it finances yet pretends is independent. As the old saying goes, he who pays the piper calls the tune. Which is why – for appearances sake, at least – the domestic ABC in Australia and Radio Australia is funded by a direct allocation from the Australian Parliament, whereas Australia Network – the external TV arm – is financed directly by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. In this case, the DFAT funded arm did its job. The rest of the ABC, including Radio Australia, did not.

Julie Bishop gave her speech to a roomful of people at the Australia Fiji Business Forum on Monday night. But, incredibly, news of its content didn’t reach Suva until Wednesday afternoon, via Fiji’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Why? Because it simply didn’t appear on any of the news alerts which are routinely monitored on an hourly basis. Grubsheet then had the following email exchange with Sean Dorney, the aforementioned ABC Pacific Correspondent, who’d sent us an email on Monday describing as “a ripper”, a hard-hitting speech to the Business Forum that morning by Fiji’s Foreign Minister, Ratu Inoke Kubuabola, complaining about Australia’s continuing hard line.

From: Graham Davis:

Sent: Wednesday, 31 July 2013 1:44 PM

To: Sean Dorney;

Subject: Julie Bishop’s speech to the Australia Fiji Business Forum

Hi Sean,

Sorry for the delay is responding. Thanks for your coverage of Ratu Inoke’s speech. Did you see the speech by Julie Bishop to the same gathering on Monday night? Haven’t seen any coverage of this but it’s obviously hugely newsworthy from Fiji’s viewpoint. Hope all is well.

We ran Julie Bishop on Australia Network News last night saying she would make it a priority to normalise relations with Fiji if the Coalitions wins. I sent the audio to Radio Australia on Monday night.

Sean

But if the ABC’s Pacific Correspondent sent the audio to Radio Australia on Monday night, what happened to it? This is the investigation that is now required into why the public broadcaster is still to report the biggest change in Australian official attitude towards Fiji in the nearly seven years since Voreqe Bainimarama’s takeover. Because there is now evidence that the Bishop audio didn’t simply fall between the cracks. Radio Australia knew about the speech all along but didn’t report it. That evidence is contained in the following email exchange between Fiji’s Permanent Secretary for Information, Sharon Smith Johns, and senior Radio Australia reporter Bruce Hill.

I’m looking for your coverage on the speech Julie Bishop gave at the Fiji/Aust business council dinner. I can’t find the link, would you be kind enough to send it to me pls.

Thanks Sharon

Sharon Smith Johns

Permanent Secretary

Ministry of Information, National Archives & Library Services of Fiji

From: Bruce Hill :

Date: Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 4:25 PM

Subject: RE: Julie Bishop speech

To: Sharon J

I believe Australia Network used it, try their web page.

So Australia Network – the ABC’s external television arm – used it but not Radio Australia. Why? It’s clear from this exchange that Bruce Hill knows about the story – that Julie Bishop announced a far reaching reform of Australia’s policy towards Fiji in the event of a Coalition win. Yet neither he nor any other Radio Australia reporter or subeditor considered it worthy enough to broadcast.

What’s more remarkable is that in the two days following Julie Bishop’s speech, Bruce Hill chose to run two stories on the Pacific Beat current affairs program highly critical of Fiji. One was an interview with the Australian trade union leader, Sharan Burrow, calling for a tougher international response against the Bainimarama Government over its refusal to grant sugar workers in Fiji a pay rise beyond that already offered by the Fiji Sugar Corporation. The other was an interview with the former Fijian Opposition leader, Mick Beddoes, lashing Ratu Inoke Kubuabola for his Brisbane speech.

So on the evidence, Bruce Hill and his masters at Radio Australia will give ample airtime to a former Fijian Opposition leader but none to the current Australian deputy Opposition leader and the person who will govern Australian policy if the Coalition wins the election. By any standard, it is an extraordinary lapse which demands an inquiry and an explanation. Because on the evidence, the public broadcaster has gagged the Australian opposition. Was it on behalf of – or at the behest of – the Labor Goverment? Or have Radio Australia’s journalists become so biased against the Coalition and/or Fiji that they allowed their prejudice to get in the way of their duty to the ABC’s Charter and its strict editorial guidelines? Radio Australia’s regional audience, not to mention Julie Bishop and the Australian and Fijian peoples, clearly have a right to know.

For the first time in nearly seven years – since the Bainimarama takeover of 2006 – there’s been a change in the official Australian attitude to Fiji. It’s outlined in a remarkable speech by Julie Bishop, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, to this week’s Australia Fiji Business Forum in Brisbane. In extraordinarily warm terms, she signals a sea change in Australia’s current hardline attitude to Fiji should the Coalition, under Tony Abbott, win the forthcoming federal election. It includes full re-engagement and the restoration of diplomatic ties and Australia “taking guidance” from Fiji on how it can best assist in the introduction of a genuine democracy next year. Read on…

Foreign Minister Kubuabola, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
My claim to fame, in so far as this audience is concerned, should be the fact that I am a board member of the West Coast Eagles Australian Rules Football Club in Perth, Western Australia and our champion ruckman is a six foot eight Fijian by the name of Nic Naitanui,
Nic Nat not only thrills his supporters in Western Australia, but he has become a household name in AFL households across Australia. He is such an exciting player, I think he will be one of the best players of this generation of Australian Rules Football. But he is also an utter gentleman, so much so that the AFL have made him multi-cultural ambassador for the sport and he travels not only across Australia but throughout the region. I understand that not only does he have a significant fan base across Australia, in what is a highly competitive sporting code, he also has a fan base amongst the Naitanui family in Fiji.
What that says is that there are so many Fijian Australians who are sports stars in our various football codes. I’d like to suggest that AFL is the most popular sporting code but I’m afraid there will be a few too many rugby league, rugby union people here to suggest this, but we have so many people of Fijian heritage who play in our sports, who are so admired and loved by the Australian people.
I believe that reflects the broader affection and warmth the Australian people feel for the people of Fiji and I hope that that warmth and that affection and that love is reciprocated. Australians and Fijians have been friends for a very long time.
I read a blog recently by a Papua New Guinean and he was commenting, with more than a touch of envy, that notwithstanding the political differences between Australia and Fiji, notwithstanding the events of 2006 and the subsequent response from Australia, nevertheless Fiji managed to attract record numbers of Australian tourists. He was trying to work out how can that be? How can Fiji attract so many more Australian tourists than PNG? He thought well perhaps it’s because the Australian people have a healthy disregard for whatever their government tells them! But he decided that the reason people flocked to Fiji is because of the warm welcome that the Fijian people give to Australian tourists – the wide smile, the ubiquitous greeting ‘bula’.
I’m not sure if he was suggesting that Papua New Guineans were less pleased to see Australian tourists – that certainly hasn’t been my experience – but nevertheless I think there is a valid point to be made, that Australians have been experiencing generous and gracious hospitality of the Fijian people for such a very long time.
This morning Foreign Minister Kubuabola made a very powerful speech. He was very candid and said perhaps what a number of people from Fiji have wanted to say for some time. We all know the detail of the events of 2006 and we know the Australian Government’s stance in relation to it but it was refreshing to hear the frustration that the Fijian Government feels about Australia’s approach.
There’s no need for me to go into the details again but Foreign Minister Kubuabola speech was a timely reminder that there are very valuable lessons to be learned if we stand in each other’s shoes and we try to see issues from each other’s perspective.
It is now time to rebuild the bridges.
Should a Coalition Government be elected at some stage this year I commit to ensuring that normalising relations between Australia and Fiji is a priority of an incoming government. I know that there will be challenges. I know that there will be a number of issues for us to address, but with the will and commitment on both sides I believe that we can achieve whatever we set out to achieve.
Of course we encourage Fiji to hold elections as Commodore Bainimarama has promised in 2014. We welcome and encourage that commitment. I would like to see, should the Coalition be elected the restoration of full diplomatic relations between Australia and Fiji. I would like to see Fiji welcomed back into the Commonwealth, the Pacific Island Forum and other forums around the world.
I’m not pretending that an election can solve all issues – although I have to say that an election in Australia would solve a lot of issues!
I’m not pretending that democracy is perfect – believe me, after sitting in the Parliament of Australia for the last three years I’m well aware of its shortcomings – but as Winston Churchill famously observed, ‘democracy is the worst form of government except for every other form’.
What I believe we should aim for is to support Fiji in its elections in 2014 and on behalf of the Coalition I pledge our support, in whatever form Fiji requires, to assist them to overcome the challenges that come with going on the path to parliamentary democracy and constitutional law and rule.
We will of course be guided by the Fijian Government as to what they seek from Australia. We will of course be guided by what it is they believe we can offer.
I don’t presume to lecture any other country about how they run their affairs but I can offer the experience Australians have had in terms of parliamentary democracy.
It is essential that oppositions and politicians have the freedom to hold the government to account.
It is essential that an independent judiciary exists to adjudicate disputes and to interpret the law.
A free and unfettered media might be a complete pain in the neck for politicians but it is essential to hold all the sides of politics to account on behalf of the people.
Political stability is what business and investors seek. The issue of sovereign risk is bad for any country and political stability is absolutely essential.
These fundamentals have been the experience of Australia and a number of other countries, including countries committed to the Commonwealth of Nations, over many years and I believe that these fundamentals can be achieved by Fiji with the support of its friends. Australia should never and will never if I have anything to do with it, forsake Fiji.
Ladies and gentlemen, foreign policy under a Coalition Government will be marked by an unmistakeable focus on our region. I come from Western Australia, so the Indian Ocean is part of our region, of course here in Brisbane the Asia-Pacific is part of our region. So for Australia our region is the Indian Ocean, Asia Pacific. This is our neighbourhood. This is where we need to focus our attention as a government.
Under a Coalition Government all of our foreign policy assets, whether they be military and defence capabilities, or economic and trade capacity or diplomatic and foreign aid activity, will be focussed, not exclusively, but unmistakeably, in our region.
Let me take trade policy for example. The Coalition will describe our foreign and trade policy an exercise in ‘economic diplomacy’.
We will align all of our agencies and all of our departments across government in pursuit of our strategic goals through economic diplomacy.
In the area of trade that means we commit to a network of bilateral and free trade agreements to liberalise trade in our region. I know of no better way of lifting countries out of poverty than through economic liberalisation through trade and through private sector investment and that is what we will encourage, country by country.
In particular I’m concerned that the PACER Plus negotiations seem not to have advanced and in fact have stalled. I think that the PACER Plus negotiations need fresh thinking, a new start. What may be required is for some of the bigger economies in the region, namely Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, PNG to conclude bilateral or, if we could do it quadrilateral, free trade agreements, a high quality agreement that would bind us together and that other countries in the Pacific can then see the benefit of a free trade agreement and can opt in to such an agreement.
They would then have the ownership of the reform process that will be needed. They would have ownership of the pace at which they would join such an agreement. Instead of standing still and leaving PACER Plus to languish I believe it needs an injection and the major economies, including Fiji, must be at the forefront of ensuring that trade liberalisation can continue in the Pacific.
Under a Coalition Government, we will continue to provide overseas development assistance into the Pacific. I acknowledge and recognise that Australia is the largest provider of aid to Fiji and to a number of other island nations in the Pacific but as a Liberal I believe in a hand up, not a hand out and I believe that’s what the countries in the Pacific are looking for as well.
Through trade liberalisation, through opening our markets, through private sector investment in development, we can turn developing countries into developed countries. Our philosophical belief in individual enterprise and in the private sector I think will have much longer term ramifications than even free trade agreements.
Back in the 1950s, Prime Minister Robert Menzies signed Australia up to what was called the Colombo Plan and through this process thousands of young students from the Asia Pacific came to Australia to study in our universities. Over a 30 year period, the 1950s to 1980s, 40,000 young people from the region studied in Australian universities, lived with Australian families, got to know the Australian way of life and they went back to their country and today they are Prime Ministers, former Prime Ministers, Cabinet Ministers, business leaders, community leaders in those countries and they have fond memories of Australia and their experience in Australia.
We believe that it’s time to reverse the Colombo Plan and we’ve announced a signature initiative dubbed the ‘New Colombo Plan’, that will see young Australians given the opportunity to study at universities in the region. We want to see it as a ‘rite of passage’ for undergraduates in Australian universities to have the opportunity under a nationally backed scheme, to undertake part of their bachelor course at a university in the region.
What we hope will happen is countries will opt-in to our New Colombo Plan. When their universities, or their higher education sector are ready to accept Australian students in large numbers, we will come to an arrangement with that country. There are lots of issues about student visas, and course accreditation and mutual recognition of capacity but over time we hope that all countries in the region will want to be part of the New Colombo Plan.
How we’ll make it attractive to young Australians to study at universities in the region is a business partnership that we propose with businesses operating in the host country.
For example, a student at Queensland University, wins a New Colombo Plan scholarship to study at the Fijian National University in engineering then say Newcrest operating in Fiji could offer them an internship, one or two days a week for the duration of the scholarship. Or more pertinently, a student studying finance in Fiji could get a job for the ANZ Bank and I’m delighted to confirm that the ANZ Bank has agreed to come on board, should we win government, to be a supporter of the New Colombo Plan, throughout the Asia Pacific. Thank you Mark.
So can you imagine, just dare to dream of an Australia where thousands and thousands of young people have lived and studied and worked in a country in our region. Learnt the language, understood the culture, got to know the people, formed friendships that will no doubt last for life and come back to Australia, with their new skills, new perspectives, new insights and new ideas. Not only will they be contributing to the productivity and prosperity of our nation, they will be part of a deeper and broader and more diversified engagement with countries in our region.
I hope that I’ve given you some indication this evening of how a Coalition Government would seek to engage, not only with Fiji, but with our region, the Pacific, in Asia, and the Indian Ocean.
I want to pay tribute to the Australia-Fiji Business Council and its counterparts in Fiji for arranging this event. I think it’s a real milestone.
I hope that when you leave, after this forum is over, you will go away firm in the knowledge, as I truly believe, that the best days of the Australia-Fiji relationship lie ahead of us.

The Honourable Julie Bishop, Deputy Leader of the Opposition and Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade

The President of the Australia-Fiji Business Council, Mr. Greg Pawson

Members of the Australia-Fiji and Fiji-Australia Business Councils

Distinguished Guests

Ladies and Gentlemen

Ni Sa Bula Vinaka and Good Morning.

At the outset, please allow me to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today and pay respects to their elders, both past and present.

I’m delighted – as Fiji’s Foreign Minister – to be here today for this important gathering of those of you who drive the economic links between our two countries and contribute so much to our prosperity. It’s especially pleasing to see the Australian Government represented here at a senior level by the Pacific Islands Minister, Senator Thistlethwaite. Relations between Australia and its Pacific neighbours are at a critical juncture and we have much to discuss While Senator Thistlethwaite is relatively new to his portfolio, I am sure he has a keen understanding of the issues we face and I look forward to continuing our constructive and friendly engagement.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the ties that bind Australia and Fiji are clearly greater than the issues that sometimes divide us. Our people are genuinely fond of each other and nothing is more important to Fiji than continuing to welcome the hundreds of thousands of Australians who visit our shores every year.

As you all know, there are also tens of thousands of Fijians living in this country, adding the richness of their culture to the great multi-cultural melting pot that is modern Australia.

Certain Fijians are even enriching the life of Senator Thistlewaite, who’s a keen supporter of the South Sydney Rabbitohs in the National Rugby League. I think I can confidently say that without Apisai Koroisau, the Fijian hooker for the Rabbitohs and the other Pacific players at the club, the Senator’s weekends wouldn’t be quite so enjoyable.

Of course, there are Fijian players throughout the NRL, as well as in the Kangaroos and Wallabies. I’m sometimes amused at the way your sports commentators mangle the pronunciation of their names but there’s no doubting the affection in which they’re held by the fans. Or the way in which Australia’s international sporting reputation so often depends on them.

The point is that our relationship runs very deep – certainly way beyond our business ties – and, person-to-person, is overwhelmingly one of mutual affection. As our Prime Minister said in an interview with the New Zealand media on Friday, “Fijians love Australians. Always have, always will”. We are neighbours and we are friends, which also means that we have our differences from time to time and also need to treat these with openness and candour. Which brings me to being candid this morning about some aspects of our relationship that we feel need addressing.

As you will have gathered from the Prime Minister’s comments on Friday, the Fijian Government is decidedly less than happy about Australia’s plan to move asylum seekers seeking to settle in Australia into Melanesia – into our neighbourhood.

For an Australian problem, you have proposed a Melanesian solution that threatens to destabilise the already delicate social and economic balances in our societies.

The Australian Government has used its economic muscle to persuade one of our Melanesian governments to accept thousands of people who are not Pacific Islanders, a great number of them permanently.

This was done to solve a domestic political problem – and for short-term political gain – without proper consideration of the long-term consequences.

This was done without any consultation, a sudden and unilateral announcement, which is not the Pacific Way and has shocked a great many people in the region.

Why – you may ask – is this any of Fiji’s business? This was a deal with Papua New Guinea, a sovereign government surely entitled to make its own arrangements.

Well, we regard it as our business because we see ourselves as part of a wider Melanesian community through the Melanesian Spearhead Group.

We are striving for more cohesion, more integration in the MSG, including the formation of a Melanesian Common Market with a free flow of goods, services and labour.

This deal – and those mooted with Solomon Islands and Vanuatu – clearly threatens our interests by altering the fundamental social fabric of any member country that accepts a deal with Australia.

We are deeply troubled by the consequent threat to the stability of these countries – and the wider Melanesian community – by the scale of what is being envisaged.

Indeed, we are alarmed to read some of the accounts of what is evidently being canvassed in Australian policy circles.

In the words of the respected Foreign Editor of The Australian newspaper, Greg Sheridan, Quote: “Imagine what the South Pacific would be like in five or six years’ time if there were 50,000 resettled refugees in PNG, and perhaps 10,000 in Vanuatu, 5000 in Solomon Islands and a few thousands elsewhere in the Pacific.

These refugees would be Iranians, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, Palestinians, perhaps some Sudanese and Somalis, and most of them getting some Australian financial support.

This population would constitute a recipe for social instability and a significant security problem for the region ”. Unquote.

Very similar sentiments have been expressed by Indonesia, the Salvation Army and a growing number of Australian interest groups. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees has warned that settling subsidized asylum-seekers in PNG under the deal could spark local resentment among a population already suffering significant disadvantage, thus leading to instability. History has shown us that such instability will have far reaching ripple effects for not only PNG but the rest of the region. As business people you are well aware of the potential for the negative spillover effect of this Australian Government policy throughout the region, given that our Pacific economies are inextricably connected.

So Ladies and Gentlemen, it IS our business and before this goes any further, we want thorough regional consultation. We want – no, we demand – to have our voices heard.

It is not our concern who wins the coming Australian election. That is a matter for the Australian people. But we are deeply concerned about the impact of Australian politics on our own affairs.

We are deeply concerned about the impact of Australian politics on the welfare of future generations of Pacific People. As Pacific Islanders, we share the horror of many in the international community at the deaths of more than one thousand asylum seekers trying to reach Australia. It is a terrible human tragedy and our hearts go out to the families of those involved. But we cannot remain silent when the current Australian Government dumps this problem – which is arguably of its own making – on our doorstep. Regrettably, from Fiji’s perspective, this deal continues a pattern of behavior on the part of the Australian Government that is inconsiderate, prescriptive, highhanded and arrogant. Instead of treating the Pacific nations as equals, your decision-makers too often ignore our interests and concerns and take it for granted that we will accede to their wishes and demands.

Australia is a vast landmass with vast resources and is thus much better placed than the small and vulnerable nations of the Pacific to address this problem. The question must be asked as to why Australia did not engage with the other Forum members before it embarked on its latest Pacific Solution for unwanted asylum seekers? From where we sit, we suspect the answer is that the Australian Government doesn’t particularly care what we think. Fiji therefore appeals to the current Australian Government to face up to the responsibilities to your neighbours.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the nature of the schism between Fiji and Australia over the events of 2006 is well known and doesn’t warrant elaborate detail here.

But we remain deeply disappointed that instead of constructive engagement, Australia chose to punish Fiji for finally addressing the deep divisions in our society, the lack of equality and genuine democracy and the corruption that was destroying our country from within.

Our doors were always open to you but you chose not to enter.

Next month, we will unveil a new Constitution that guarantees, for the first time, political, economic and social rights for all Fijians, including access to basic services. Next year, we will have the first genuine democracy in Fiji’s history of one person, one vote, one value. And the legal enforcement of our people to vote along racial lines will finally be a thing of the past.

We imagined – perhaps naively – that our bigger neighbours – Australia and New Zealand – might at least try to understand what we were trying to achieve. But they turned their backs on us and set about trying to damage the country in the hope that they would destroy our reformist government.

It is not easy to forget Australia’s efforts at the United Nations to bring an end to our three-decade long commitment to UN peacekeeping. It is not easy to forget the Australian Government’s action in severing our access to loans from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. It is not easy to forget the travel bans that are still in place and have led to inconvenience and heartbreak and deprived us of the ability to attract the best people to run our government departments and even serve on the boards of our public enterprises and utilities.

Even now, Australia has refused a visa for our Minister for Trade and Industry to attend this gathering. So the Minister who can most assist you all in your efforts to expand that trade cannot be present in this room.

This is an unconscionable impediment to free trade, just as it was unconscionable for Australia to ban entry to the former head of our national airline, an American citizen punished for assuming the job of Chairman of Tourism Fiji while he pursued the interests of an airline part owned by Qantas.

When Australia stops trying to damage Fiji – which it is still doing – only then can we can begin to rebuild the political relationship, including the restoration of full diplomatic ties. But it will be a different relationship. The events of the past seven years have made it so.

When it comes to global and regional politics, we have taken a different path and forged new relationships with countries that proved to be more understanding and less prescriptive, who understood what we were doing rather than telling us what to do.

Fiji no longer looks to just Australia and New Zealand as our natural allies and protectors, we look to the World. Jolted from our complacency by the doors that were slammed in our faces, we looked North – to the great powers of Asia, especially China, India and Indonesia and more recently to Russia. We looked South, to the vast array of nations, big and small, that make up the developing world and we currently chair the G77, the biggest voting bloc at the United Nations. And we looked to our Melanesian neighbours, to forge closer ties with them and use our collective strength to make our voices heard in global forums and secure better trading deals for us all.

So while whoever wins the Fijian election next year will doubtless find a more accommodating attitude in Canberra, on the Fijian side our attitudes have changed irrevocably. We are keen to rebuild the relationship but not on the same basis. We want mutual understanding and respect and to be regarded as equals, just as we pursue all of our international relationships under our overarching policy to be “friends to all”.

And so, Ladies and Gentleman, Fiji renews its call today for the Australian Government to engage more constructively with it and with the other Melanesian countries, all of whom – to a greater or lesser extent – share our view that current Australian attitudes leave a lot to be desired.

It is, in turn, fuelling a growing belief that the current frameworks for regional cooperation are not serving our needs. In Fiji’s case, our continuing suspension from the Pacific Forum has convinced us that Australia and New Zealand have a disproportionate influence over its affairs that is clearly to our detriment and sometimes the detriment of our neighbours.

So Fiji wants to rearrange the furniture with a regional body that more properly reflects the concerns of Pacific island nations.

Next week in Nadi, Fiji is hosting the inaugural Pacific Islands Development Forum. 23 Pacific countries will be attending, as well as 10 countries with observer status. At this meeting, Australia and New Zealand will be observers, not members. And the island countries will be able to discuss their own challenges and formulate their own solutions free from outside interference and the prescription of their larger neighbours.

When it comes to our bilateral trade relationship,Ladies and Gentlemen, of course, Australia is still Fiji’s biggest partner and our healthy trading relationship continues. You will hear in greater detail about the challenges and opportunities from Mr. Shaheen Ali, our Permanent Secretary for Trade and Industry Mr. Truman Bradley, Chairman of Investment Fiji and Mr. Inia Nayasi, Deputy Governor of the Reserve of Fiji, later on in the Forum, not only about our political reforms but our increasingly healthy trading environment, of the lowest corporate and personal taxes in the region, large incentives for investment and significant improvements in infrastructure such as roads, ports and telecommunications.

Fiji remains open for business, as the theme for the 20th Australia-Fiji Business Forum and Trade Expo states and I encourage you all to seize the opportunities that our reforms in Fiji are producing.

As a Government, we believe in creating a conducive environment for trade, investment and business. We are convinced that the best way to raise living standards is to create and sustain jobs. That means a strong collaboration between the public and private sectors and a strong collaboration between workers and businesses.

In conclusion, I wish to leave you with the following considerations:

·The Government of Fiji urges the Government of Australia to take cognisance of the effect of its domestic policies on its Pacific neighbours and work towards an alternative asylum-seeker solution.

·Bilateral relations between Fiji and Australia at the political level can only ever be restored on an equal footing, with mutual respect for sovereignty

·In spite of our political differences, the Government of Fiji remains committed to facilitating and encouraging Australian businesses to

reach their fullest potential in Fiji. As we keep saying, we are building a new and better Fiji and that means new and better opportunities for the business community flowing from our reform programs.

Fiji is indeed open and always ready for business.

Thank you for the invitation to address you and I wish you well in your deliberations. Vinaka vakalevu